Mohan, thanks for trying, but I'm still uncertain.

Your discussion of the Baldwin Effect seems to be what I thought it to be: an observed correlation between behavior and genotype. You point out that the aim of Baldwin was to explain this correlation of behavior and genotype in Darwinian terms, even though it might superficially seem to mimic Lamarckianism. I guess he did pretty well at it, but this seems to lend support to Darwinism rather than to disprove Lamarckianism. I don't think much of Popper, but he would ask, can Lamarckianism be falsified?

Now, as for the Weismann Barrier, which contradicts Lamarckianism, I don't know how Weismann  arrived at it. For example, did he repeatedly cut off the tails of mice to see if that might have a long-term effect on heredity? If he did something like this, his Barrier only represents a generalization of experience. This is how "law" seems now understood in the philosophy of science, where explanation increasingly relies on singular causality, a desciption of the operative mechanism in particular cases. Without at the time having any idea of the physical mechanisms that might be involved, Weismann's Barrier would seem only a generalization of experience, not a real universal determinant. That Weismann's inferences contradict those of Lamarck does not seem relevant to discussions today, which instead is over the mechanisms involved. 

I suspect the issue of unit is perhaps only a matter of perspective and so won't belabor it here, for I'm agreeable to what you say. I also put aside the question of the extent to which adaptation is the sole or principle determinant of reproductive success.

Instead, what I'd like to do is to try to clear up a bit a comment I made earlier. It seems that genotype is traditionally seen as an "entity", a closed system, a self-sufficient structure. However, it is also said that genotype has an effect on phenotype. If so, and if genotype is self-contained, then surely it must have free energy. Maybe Morowitz gets into this, but for the moment I'll assume that the genotype, once formed, is not entirely self-contained. Instead, it could be represented as one aspect of a broader process. That is, a probability distribution that is not actualized until it enters a relation with its environment (phenotype). This also seems to be what people often imply. However, if the genotype is a probability distribution that is actualized by the constraint of circumstantial structures, then the inside-outside ontological contradiction seems to break down, and the  Weismann Barrier issue might be mute, for genetic possibilities are always actualized by external constraints.

But the question remains why genotypes changes. Here random mutation steps in, but I raised some objection to it, and perhaps I should elaborate. If we take randomness to be the equivalent of non-determination, it then implies there are things or properties that are not contingent. This seriously runs the danger of an ontological dualism, of an objective idealism. However, modern Western science depends on its assumption of a coherent universe (where "coherence" might be variously defined). For something to be random seems to separate it from the mutual relations that define coherence. So I suppose that "random mutation" is only a way of speaking, and we lack the divine omniscience necessary to understand the determinations (not necessarily causal) at work. This abstruse point might have some relevance, for if mutations are really random, then by definition they are not influenced by phenotype; if the determination of their change is simply beyond our ken, then there is no objection in principle over the possibility of phenotypical influence on mutation. In other words, I suspect the whole issue of Lamarck vs. Darwin may only be epistemological, an effect of how we frame the world or ideology.

Haines